CHAPTER 3
Main Findings from the Case Studies
This chapter presents data on cargo dwell time in the six ports studied— Dar es Salaam, Douala, Durban, Lomé, Mombasa, and Tema—and strives to explain the main causes of delays.1 It demonstrates that long dwell times are the norm in Sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, despite numerous contributing factors, storage is the most important in most cases. The chapter is divided into two types of case studies: the first type gives benchmark figures, while the second type provides shipment-level analysis for Dar es Salaam and Douala and, therefore, is more useful than the usual analyses for understanding the main issues in this regard.
Dwell Time Benchmarks In terms of performance, Durban appears to be a good benchmark for South African ports and, even more important, for Sub-Saharan African ports. Durban has by far the lowest cargo dwell time in Southern Africa and in Sub-Saharan Africa in general. Durban’s dwell time is comparable to that of most ports in Europe or Asia, where dwell times of three to four days are the norm. In Sub-Saharan Africa, dwell time in ports like Mombasa or Dar es Salaam is between 10 and 12 days, and, in the other major ports, it is 25